Dear Editor: Thank you for Feb. 27 story, “How Paly’s soccer season was ruined.” I hated that it happened, but appreciated the article being written. It shows the senselessness of laws that are not set up to help our children but to hoard them and fight over them as a valuable commodities.

Nowhere in the endless hours that Ms. Lazenby Blaser spent tracking down these offenders did she ever show what they had done that was so terrible. They were good enough to train with higher level players. The state says if you decide to get better at soccer, you cannot play for your school. So the children are punished because in their spare time they are working hard to improve themselves. I don’t know how the governing bodies justify this punishment. It is an abuse of the power given to them to watch over the well-being of their students. After all, there is no rule that says they can’t be in another sport, or even multiple sports, have part-time jobs or engage in other extracurricular activities. Surely all of these factors would have been considered, instead of other groups competing for soccer players.

Melanie Latham,

Chattanooga, Tenn.

Obama’s drones

Dear Editor: Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recently revealed he was initially instructed to deny the existence of the Obama administration’s targeted killing program overseas. Even though the administration has since backed down from that stance, it continues to stonewall members on releasing the Justice Department memos explaining the program’s legal rationale.

The administration’s position was initially that it couldn’t even acknowledge there was in fact a targeted killing program. Now its position has shifted slightly and it is saying it can’t acknowledge that the CIA has a role in the targeted killing program.

That kind of argument is really beneath our system. And it’s certainly true that the Obama administration has continued many of the Bush administration’s most controversial and problematic national security policies and, in some instances, expanded those policies.

Said U.S. Sen. Rand Paul: “We’re talking about someone eating at a cafe in Boston or in New York, and a Hellfire missile comes raining in on them. There should be an easy answer from the administration on this. They should say, ‘Absolutely no, we will not kill Americans in America without an accusation, a trial and a jury.’ “

Ted Rudow III,

Palo Alto

Ammunition tax

Dear Editor: If an extra tax on ammunition seems reasonable, then why not extra taxes on these:

• Cars capable of exceeding 70 mph, since they kill 93 people a day. Or is that the drivers?

• Speed-rated tires, since 140 mph seems a tad excessive and kills 33 people a day.

• Cellphones, since distracted drivers kill 15 a day.

• Baseball bats and hammers, which are used to commit more murders than all rifles combined.

In closed door talks, Sen. Dianne Feinstein agreed to a major new water policy for California that sells out the Delta and guts Endangered Species Act protections. Sen. Barbara Boxer is fighting the good fight to remove the rider from her comprehensive water infrastructure bill, but it may take a presidential veto.